Evangeline Ling: After The FAYZ
by CrazyKitten2112
Summary: This one shot was written for The Gone Challenge and centers around an OC originally introduced in my Diana Ladris pre-FAYZ fanfic, The First September. Even if you haven't read The First September you might enjoy this one shot, but you'll probably like it better of you read the first story. Gone series belongs to Michael Grant. Rated K plus for violence and death.


I still remember it like it was yesterday. The way that my parents and I hugged when the wall finally came down. They hugged me so tight that I couldn't breathe and I just cried, and cried, and cried. I couldn't stop repeating "It was so bad." Over and over again.

It was the understatement of the year. Saying that the FAYZ was "so bad" was like saying Jesus was "so good." That might sound a little bit blasphemous, but I was just trying to prove a point. The FAYZ was truly horrible. I started out at Coates Academy. When the FAYZ first started, I hated my parents for sending me there. All that I had done was say "oh my God" in a church! Did I really deserve to be trapped in the FAYZ because of that? No, I didn't. Nobody deserved to be trapped in a place like the FAYZ. Let me rephrase that, nobody should've been trapped in the FAYZ. There were definitely people who deserved it, but they were the ones who made it horrible for everyone else.

Those people were the kids who encased Mica McNauld's hands on cement just because she could turn into a cloud of vapor. Mica and I had been friends since we had sat next to each other in our seventh grade biology class. She had straight brown hair, tan skin, and dark brown eyes. She was a quiet girl, shy like me. I was the first person she trusted to tell about her powers. Unfortunately, Diana Ladris had the power to read other people's powers. She read Mica as a three bar mutant. Then, she told her boyfriend Caine, who had told Drake Merwin, who had "plastered" poor Mica. The thing that sickens me the most is that on my first day of school I thought Diana was going to be my best friend. I couldn't have been more wrong about that.

Eventually we had to leave Mica at Coates when we all went to Perdido Beach. I felt bad because I never came back to check on her or anything, but then one day she showed up in town with the hostile black girl named Dekka who could get rid of gravity and some younger mutants that I didn't know yet. I let Mica move in with me and my best friend, Courtney.

Living together was relatively good for a while. I didn't have food, but I did have Isaac Steek. He wasn't exactly cute. In fact, Courtney told me he was an ugly geek almost daily. He was a lot of other good things, though. He was nice, funny, and he gave me my first kiss. I still remember his curly blonde hair, gray-green eyes, and silver square framed glasses. Our relationship was great, until he got involved in the Human Crew.

I hated the Human Crew. They reminded me of hate groups like the KKK. The HC, as Isaac liked to call it, was the reason we broke up. One day I asked him if would've ever dated me if I was a mutant. He didn't directly say no, but I knew that he meant it. It was hard, but I decided to break up with him. There were lots of tears on my part, but Courtney and Mica helped me through it. I don't know what happened to Isaac, besides the fact that he ended up surviving the FAYZ. He must've helped his prejudiced buddies set the town on fire, but I didn't like thinking about that. I always thought my first relationship would end because I caught my boyfriend cheating on me or something. Never in my wildest dreams did I think that I would call it off because he was a jerk to my mutant friend.

I didn't even have time to get over the break up when Courtney got sick. It started out like the stomach flu, but then it got worse. Courtney moved into Dahra's hospital. Mica and I came to visit her daily, but that couldn't save her from coughing her guts out. I wasn't there when it had happened, but Mica was. The way that she described it to me was enough to make me glad I wasn't there, but I was still sad that I didn't get a chance to say goodbye to one of my two best friends.

I had lost Isaac, and Courtney was gone for good. I was totally devastated. I didn't even care when Caine came back to town. I didn't even care whether I went to Lake Tramonto or stayed in Perdido Beach. I just followed Mica to the Lake. If I lost her I didn't know what I would've done. The lake was better than Perdido Beach had ever been, but I just felt worse. I missed Courtney every day. I loved hanging out with Mica, but she was missed Courtney too. Our group dynamic wasn't the same without Courtney.

My depression was only amplified when Gaia attacked the lake. She took the only person that I had left away from me with her laser powers. At first I just felt sorry for myself. Right after she died, I couldn't shake the thought that it should've been me. Then I remembered, that she was happy in heaven with Courtney and any dead grandmas and grandpas that she had. It was probably god's plan for me to live. I couldn't give up.

I tried to help fight in the big battle against Gaia, but I don't think I was much help. I spent most of the battle at Cliffside, waiting for Lana to heal my broken leg. I didn't even get to fight. I'd tripped trying to run with a gun in my arms, and a couple of people trampled me before anyone noticed that I was on the ground. Lana never got around to healing my leg, but I when the FAYZ wall came down my doctor put a cast on it.

The FAYZ had stolen a year of my life, my first relationship, and the lives of my two best friends, but it hadn't stolen the one thing that mattered most. Myself. In fact it brought the true me into a whole new light. It took me long enough, but Evangeline Ling finally learned to stand on her own two feet.


End file.
